


Personhood Constructs

by TallysGreatestFan



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F, Implied Interrogation, Implied/Referenced Torture, Trans Female Character, identity exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28736712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TallysGreatestFan/pseuds/TallysGreatestFan
Summary: Captured on a far away alien planet, a Horde Clone encounters the concept of a own identity.
Relationships: Horde Clone/Female Alien OC
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Personhood Constructs

**Author's Note:**

> I have a whole story about this OC I already referenced to in another fic, but finally I managed to get a part of this story in a smaller piece.

The clone hated the silence. Too much space to be filled by his own thoughts, his fear of the pain Heska would inflict on him to find out how to harm the Horde, his knowledge of how he failed Horde Prime, how he had managed to get impaled by a Mazebuilders weapon and got captured instead of finding a way to navigate to their home planet, him noticing all the details of his defect, how hard his muscles were to control and how much they cramped and refused to do the movements they should do and how much his hands trembled.

Even when Heska came to tie him up and hit him or electrocute him or cut him open it was almost welcome because it was at least not silence, or when the red haired one who had no authority in the organization came and brought him strange food and strange clear liquid, but when Lirwa came – the clone realized that he looked forward to that, and that was dangerous. Even with his limited knowledge about the intricacies of primitives social lives he knew that Lirwa just as much as Heska was there to get information from him. But cooperating was the only way to stay alive and maybe get back to the Horde and tell them what he had learned.

As the door in front of his cell, before the glass, opened, it was Lirwa. As always, the clone noticed how the gold of her hair and the blueish grey of the two strands surrounding her beige face and on the reversed triangle of fur on her forehead contrasted in a fascinating way. There was something oddly familiar about the both soft and sharp features of her face by now, something that filled him with an odd warmth.

“Both Heska and Dakun started referring to you as Nav in their files. Was that something you chose yourself?”, her voice had a soothing quality with how soft and monotone it was, so different to Heskas harsh bellowing.

“They needed something to distinguish me. I thought I have to come up with the least offending to Prime before they chose something that is even more presumptuous.”

Lirwas eyes narrowed and there was a small, curious smile around her thin lips: “What is the meaning behind it?”

It still felt strange that something of the clones own choosing was given such a importance, blasphemous, but it was something he had to play along with to get them to trust him enough for escaping.

“That is why I chose it. It has no real meaning. It just is a shortening of my last occupation given to me by Prime, navigator.”

This time, Lirwa did actually smile. It should have concerned the clone, but it did not. It just made him feel warm in the chest and safe.

They did their usual talk, snippets of information of their cultures going back and forth in exchange for more information. Strange how important the clone felt during it. And how content Lirwa, the constant nervousness almost falling off her and her voice slightly lesser meek.

The clone knew it was sin, but he had so less to look out for, he could not help but relish it.

“Do you have any more questions?”, Lirwa finally asked, as if the clone was in a place to ask questions, as if they were equals. But it was not overbearing, he was sure that Lirwa really felt of them in that way.

“I noticed that these words you use to refer to people instead of their names in your language”

“Pronouns.”

“That these differ between people. I noticed that this also does happen in more than just your language, several planets I have been on had this, but Horde Prime never went into detail why that is like that, just that it is one of these things people who are not the Horde do. What are the criteria for how those refer? I saw that you and Heska are refered to as ‘her’ but me and Dakun as ‘he’ and the red haired one who has barely any power as ‘they’.”

Lirwa sat down in this way she always did before she talked about something specifically fascinating from her xenoantropology studies. The clone had come to like it.

“It varies from civilization to civilization, and it’s often very complex and loaded, but generally these depend on gender. It is”, she looked away from the clone for a moment, thinking hard, “often it is said to be the social roles based on ones biological sex, but we learned in classes that it’s actually more how cultures interpret the existing biological differences and assign cultural roles on them that may or may not align or partially align with biological attributes of the person, though the crucial criteria is what the person feels is them.”

That was fascinating. Also such a strange and odd concept, that something a person was could be something they themselves knew, not something that was decided for them.

“There are some cultures and people who are against people deciding themselves what is actually fitting for them, and in my opinion – and I may be a bad antrophologist for that – this is one of these severe cases where one should overlook differences in cultural value because this is really, really painful and damaging if done wrong. But generally it is something one, well, one does not really chose it, one rather thinks about it and something feels more right than the rest?

Me and Heska get referred to has ‘her’ because we have the female gender role”

“The ones who organize, have political power and go to war because they are lighter and so use lesser resources and fuel for the war machines when they use them in your culture.”

Lirwa nodded: “Dakun, and you because from the way Horde Clones look and act and from the closest translation of your own language you resemble the male role the most, use ‘he’. And Ifnar, the red haired one, is one of the many other but comparably rarer genders so they are referred to as ‘they’.”

Nav thought for a moment, trying out each of those full of curiosity just to know how that would feel like.

“She/her and the female gender feels somehow more me than what you are using now.”, the clone exclaimed, and then realized something, and added: “I am sorry, I know that gender is something very deep and important in many cultures and I should not have taken that so easy.”

Lirwa looked at the clone strangely, it was like softness but in the form of a gaze?

“No, no. I… I do have the gender that was assigned to me based on my biological details, so I am not really an authority here, but I think it can be easy as that. And if you find out that it does not fit, you just change it again. We, eh, I mean the Mazebuilders, are not that strict about that. If it feels more like you it is more like you.”

“Thank you.”, the clone said. Nav. She/her. Nav is sitting here, _she_ is talking with Lirwa. It felt good, like warm water surrounding her.

“I make sure to put that in your file so that everybody else sees it and respects it.”, Lirwa said. And as she already was walking out, she turned to her again, and added: “I can ask them to give you some pictures of typical womans clothes in our culture, and then you could decide what of it you want. If you cooperate well, I could try to convince them that you get new clothes if you want. Ah, and I could also give you some books about the role of womanhood in our culture.”

Nav smiled. Finally something to get her head filled with. (It was sin, it was giving her to much importance, she knew that, but it felt to good so she pushed that aside. She was sure this was going to harm her later)

Actually, the torture sessions were not that much worse than getting purified, so it was easy to give Heska just the information she needed to survive but not the one that would severely harm the Horde. Heska sweared and growled over it. Once Nav even heard Lirwa and Heska fight, Lirwa insisting that she was to brutal and that this was not necessary and Heska then growling at her that a delusional madwoman like her could not possibly understand what was necessary and not and that “these fucking clones are just to sturdy, I don’t understand it”.

But she seemed to have cooperated well enough, or maybe her overall was just too gross and smelly by now, because about a week after Lirwas and hers talk about gender Lirwa came with a batch of golden and brown fabric. She was smiling brightly.

“I leave you to try it on. If that’s okay for you, I will come back and you can show me.”

Something fluttered in Navs stomach about that. “I would like too.”

Alone again, Nav took the clothes from the small exchange station where normally her food was coming from. The fabric was oddly light and rougher than the Horde Uniform, but in a way that felt interesting. She striped out of the overall and tried her best not to look to closely at her marred body, but she still noticed how her arms and legs and her stomach were slightly thinner than a Horde Clone should be from not being able to exercise her cramped muscles as they should, and all the scars in various states of healing, both from torture and from all the times her defect had made her to slow for battle. The angry green scar right over her flat chest where the weapon hat impaled her still itched a bit.

The trouser was wide, and the way it played around her thighs and then just stopped over her knees felt completely different from both the Horde uniform and the overall the Mazebuilder soldiers had given her to wear. It went tighter around her hips though and ended at her waist though, and the familiar pressure of the fabric was calming.

She took the top. It was tight around her arms and stomach – she tucked it into the trouser as she had seen one of the models in the magazines Lirwa had given her do – but higher up there was more fabric than necessary so that it fell in curved folds around her chest. It was absolutely unnecessary, but it felt oddly good.

Last piece was one of these scarfs that showed that the wearer was a woman in Mazebuilder culture, Lirwa had explained that to her, and had also explained that these days most women did not wear these all the time, and a simple clasp to bind the two ends of the scarf together at her neck. She felt so happy that she nearly moved from happiness as she put it on, and she did not know why.

With her claws she combed her short tuft of hair to both sides in an attempt to make it look at least somewhat more feminine.

She looked in the mirror Lirwa had let her outside of the glass closing her cell. With the wide, elegant trouser what was free of her legs looked long and thin and elegant just like the women on the pictures, and her hips were broad just like theirs, accented through how high the trouser ended.

Her shoulders were somewhat broader than most of the women though, but through the fabric making folds in front of her chest it looked as if there was more volume than there actually was. She still did not look like a mazebuilder woman, of course she did not, but more than before. She saw herself grin broadly in the mirror. It really felt more her. Nav. My name is Nav.

 _Individualism is selfishness and selfishness is darkness_.

Why did something that was wrong feel so good?

But she could not think further because in this moment Lirwa entered the room again. Her eyes widened, so much that for a moment the black oval of her pupils in the pale blue of her irises that filled out all of the eye did not touch her eyelashes anymore. There was something fascinating about her eyes. For the other Mazebuilders, their eyes with the pupils reminded her of Horde Prime and she felt threatened and watched, but hers were just… different.

Nav could not see it from where she was standing, because it was behind her back, but she could swear that her short, fluffy tail flickered in excitement.

There was this beautiful tiny smile again that brought warmth into Navs chest: “You… you look good. I really like your hips. You have such nice hips.”

Then she looked down, apparently this was something she was not supposed to say, though Nav did not quite understand why pointing out something about the physical appearance of someone else was something she was not allowed to do.

They continued to talk, about clothes and tactical unimportant details about their lives. Nav felt oddly seen in more ways than just the visual, but unlike Horde Primes knowing, holy gaze that saw each of her sins, it did not feel scary.

“I wish I could stay longer. I have a tactical meeting with some other scientists…”, Lirwa said after some time.

As she was gone Nav looked in the mirror again. So different from how her brothers looked.

How presumptuous had she been? She had defied Horde Primes will.

Suddenly it was hard to breathe, and something cold clenched in her chest.

No, this was necessary to escape this, to adapt to these primitives ways. This was all just superficial. She would return to the Horde, and she would fight these people and make them part of Horde Primes light. (She hated the idea of fighting Lirwa, but it was for her own good).

But why did it feel better to be here like this than to be in the Horde?

**Author's Note:**

> I hope the trans aspects of this worked. I am cis (I think?), so it was really risky to put it this much in the center of the story, and I did not originally planned it, it just happened during writing that it got this prevalent. I let a fandom friend who is non-binary look over it, but still, I am somewhat nervous about this story. 
> 
> I had the characters of Nav and Lirwa in my head since I first watched season 4 (almost directly after it came out).
> 
> Please comment, I am really happy about comments.


End file.
